The Goth Club

Every year, on the Queen’s Birthday weekend, there is an event known as the Comikaze 24hr Challenge.

It’s basically an endurance challenge for cartoonists. As a breed, we tend not to exercise, or go outside much, so we have a different kind of endurance challenge.

We attempt to make an entire monthly publication’s worth of comic in a single period of 24 consecutive hours. This is hard enough. To make it harder, it should be noted that Queen’s Birthday weekend is the same weekend as my birthday. So I am basically guaranteed to start this event with a positive BAC reading. But just to make sure that I stay evenly juiced up with the “creative process”, there is generally about 6 liters of energy drinks, and a bottle of vodka, to keep me going.

The idea was originally floated by comic artist luminary Scott McCloud, but the American challenge (which produces a book of the winners each year) falls on a really suck date, so we started our own down under a number of years ago.

OzTAKU and Pulp Faction are the two largest groups that enter, alongside numerous individuals who have no affiliation with either, with Pulp Faction hosting most of the content.

My submission effort this year has probably been my best yet, although I really didn’t push myself, having only done 14 hours of work on my entry, and getting 11 pages done (as one seems to have gone missing, and all things considered, I’m far too tired to simply redo it as I already had the handicap of my birthday hangover). The story came to me while I was having a conversation with a friend on MSN the other day, and has been playing on my mind ever since. The idea that we are going to reach a saturation point with these devices, and the wireless network accessibility to allow people to be permanently Wired is a little frightening in some ways, honestly.

Already our generation has a preference to communicate via text instead of face to face, or even voice to voice. That I am telling you this via a blog, and you are reading it, and we might have a discussion about it in person, but far more likely to over MSN or Facebook is rather telling of that already. Now think about what it will be like when you can access the net quickly, and for free, while you’re on the go. You’re probably going to be so busy typing to 3-4 people at once, tweeting, updating statuses on various social networks, that a phone call is seriously going to throw you off your game. Better to just text the person to MSN you. Likewise, how much original content do you have to talk about when you see people in person, that you haven’t already said on one of your many social sites? And did you a raise an eyebrow when I just said “content” instead of something more “natual” like “fresh conversation”? Because if you didn’t, you’re already thinking about your social interactions with other people in terms of computer mediated encounters, or even just exchanges of information, instead of an actual honest-to-man conversation.

Anyway, enough blabbering on about my perfect future where personal space is broken down to the point that groping a tit is more acceptable than a handshake, and everyone shuts the fuck up. Enjoy Say Hello.

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If you’ve got a few hours to while away, I recommend you go and check out some of the other entries.

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Yet another drink for a friend.

I'm a glass half empty kind of guy

In this particular case, I have a long time friend James, who is currently overseas playing poker at a professional level I’m led to believe (suck on that, David). Yesterday he updates his Facebook status as claiming he was holding the gayest cocktail ever. I was certain I could do better. He brought the challenge, and now the challenge is on. (more…)

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For those that saw my Facebook status over the weekend and were assuming I was on a massive binge of sexual infedelity this weekend, nothing could have been further from the truth, except assuming I had converted to Mormonism and was looking taking applicants via interview process for the remaining 3 wife slots one gets.

I had in actual fact gone to Triple J’s One Night Stand… A music festival promoting A-list local acts, paid for with tax money. Considering that I pay my $0.08 per day for the ABC’s funds, and that it was only a 3 hour drive away, I decided I should go. Also, I liked a couple of the tracks some of the bands were going to be playing.

My gawthic sarcasm aside, it was actually an amazingly enjoyable evening, even while it was pissing down with rain, with the slight exception of my tinnitus going apeshit and forcing me to miss to sit at the very back of the grounds to prevent an intense migraine during the last act.

We were still in the queue that snaked around the entire football grounds as Children Collide were playing… Possibly a good thing. We actually got through the security gate just in time to catch the beginning of Miami Horror. A dancy little set, and still bright enough to take photos, if it hadn’t started to piss down with rain

Fleeing to the safety and cover of the side booths, as approximately 3,000 other people were attempting to do, we made a dash for the vegan burger stand, under the assumption that would be the least crowded, and potentially provide something nutritious and filling. Surprisingly, it was tasty at that even if the majority of the contents that spilled out at the first bite, and down the front of my pants, was satay sauce that had the right colour and consistency to make it look like I’d drunkenly shat myself… down the front… somehow…

You get creative when you’re drunk or high and at a music festival, right?

When the aptly named Miami Horror finally did get off, it was time for The Butterfly Effect. This is the bit where I get my jollies off, because as it stands, I like The Butterfly Effect. You should to. Imago was a great album in so far as “hardcore” music goes. What really did it for me was when they started to play a cover of Portishead’s Glorybox. I really hope someone had the foresight to bootleg the concert because that was fucking awesome.

Next up: Eskimo Joe
I’ve got to say, I was actually really unimpressed by this set. It may have been cold and pissing with rain, but the new album just does not rock my socks, jocks or cock.
It’s frustrating, because Inshalla has a great title track, but the rest is such a mismatched grab bag… it sounds B-sideish. Hell, there was something in there that made me think that Cyndi Lauper was writing their latest songs. If you listen to the album, you’ll see what I mean.

The night ended on Hilltop Hoods. I’m not a big fan of rap music in general, but these guys just have fun with it, which is what this sort of thing should be about in the first place, and they manage to do it without pandering to American stereotypes of what rappers should be or go on about… However, as I mentioned, splitting headache, tinnitus, had to sit this one out.
For an hour I’m sitting under cover, listening to this bizarre doppler effect, having a conversation with someone I’ve never met before and will never see again while we assiduously try to avoid looking at the highschool kids attempting to have sex (he couldn’t get it up because it was too cold, apparently) about 5 meters away in the “most private place [they] could find”.

Honestly, kids, that’s what the moshpit is for! No one’s going to notice you fucking in it.

Finally over, there’s nothing quite like the crush and buzz of about 8,000 people trying to get out of an 8 meter gap in the fence that serves as the exit whilst about 400 people mill around directly in front of it trying to spot their friends, and then you all proceed to walk to a sporting oval where you were meant to park your cars and hope to got that it hasn’t turned to mud and bogged you in.
Thankfully, it hadn’t, we escaped.

Don’t feel bad if you totally missed it. Unless you’re a fan of the bands playing you didn’t really miss too much. As music festivals go, it was missing out on all the side stuff because, being government funded, no commercial activity other than band merchandise and food provision was allowed. You weren’t even allowed to bring in alcohol, drugs, or incindiary devices! Precisely how you can have a great night without committing an drunken act of arson whilst high on PCP is beyond me sometimes.

Photos to come.

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If you’ve never seen Dead Like Me, then you’re not just living.

Terrible puns aside, this was a TV series that not only had an intriguing premise, it had fantastically believable actors, great drama, and a whole mess of interwoven storylines that just never got wrapped up in the TV series. It had a solid two seasons, but I get the feeling that  the show was simply too esoteric to really get a large enough audience to keep it going… So they wrapped it up with an ending that was pretty final, but also left pretty much every thread still hanging out.

That’s right, the vast majority of the storylines were completely unfinished, and they finished the series. Most likely this was because Bryan Fuller, the creator and original writer left after “complications with the studio”… He then went on to do other amazing shows like Pushing Daisies and the pilot for The Amazing Screw On Head… oh, and this little show you might not know about yet called Heroes.

This left the title, and the yet to be released films, in the hands of hacks brought in by the MGM, Masius and Godchaux… who have shows such as Touched By An Angel to their name. Yes, I hear you facepalming out there. I was too when I found this out.

They could have used a much better cover font than "Creepy Girl". Lazy arsed layout guy!

Whilst Life After Death has a similar feel to the TV show, it really wasn’t the same. The character always had a certain sense of cynicism and defeatism about them, resigned to do their jobs as reapers, and fully aware of how the system worked. In this, they somehow mysteriously forget all that and fuck things up incredibly like it’s the first few episodes all over again, and then solve the problem in the most unimaginative way possible: Attempting to kill the dead guy.

Sadly, this is more due to the screening time being over in 10 minutes, because they’d fucked up the pacing.

Which is sad, because the storyline featuring George, the main character of the TV series, was actually well written, well thought out, and well paced… In fact, it wasalmost exactly like an episode of Touched By An Angel… which was not what was expected in the slightest when I got this.

To sum it up, they finally attempt to finish off the TV series, but really just made a double episode.

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